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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25407949">A Crown of Dying Stars</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoFootprintsInSand/pseuds/NoFootprintsInSand'>NoFootprintsInSand</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AU, Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempted Murder Is Foreplay, Autoerotic Asphyxiation, BDSM, Drama Llama, F/M, First Time, Hermione Wins, Possessive Tom Riddle, Rough Sex, Save Or Temper Tom Riddle’s Revolutionary Agenda, Spanking, The Basilisk is Actually Quite Nice, Time Travel, Time Travel Gone Rather Wrong, Tomione Trope Bingo 2020, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, and lose, unhealthy everything</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 03:34:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>16,465</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25407949</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoFootprintsInSand/pseuds/NoFootprintsInSand</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“The setting moon is but a shard in the sky, and it looks sharp and deadly. She wants to pluck it from its place in the heavens and run him through with it for making her feel like this.</p><p>For making her yearn.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hermione Granger/Tom Riddle, Hermione Granger/Voldemort</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>163</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>541</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Tomione Trope Bingo 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>
  <b><br/>A Crown of Dying Stars </b>
</p><hr/><p><br/>The first time she sees him she thinks that he’s six, maybe seven. She flashes into existence in a dreary, frigid room, but all she can really see is his eyes.</p><p>They are dark, and serious, and cold. As cold as the room.</p><p>“Who are you?” he asks, voice childish and high, but she can’t answer.</p><p>She’s already gone again. And oh god, the pain of it is <em> indescribable.</em></p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The next time he’s ancient. Face distorted far beyond what she thought possible, all torn nostrils and red eyes and a maw that is unnaturally wide </p><p>(<em>all the better to swallow large prey with, </em> she most determinedly does <em> not </em> think).</p><p>She lands almost right by his feet, a violent slam into a hardwood floor that reverberates through her ribs and jaw, and she sucks breaths through a rictus grin. There is the sense of flames, a tangible thing curling on her tongue, smoke in her mind. In her peripheral she sees crystal chandeliers and priceless artwork and his acolytes, his devoted. Scores of them, so many,<em> far too many</em>, dark of cloth and white of mask and permeated with evil.</p><p>“Hello my dear.”</p><p>His voice is a terrifying hiss, far beyond what she can remember of it from her own time, but she can’t focus on that, she <em> can’t</em>. She’s gripped by a queer sort of amalgam of fascination and terror at the expression on his face instead. Is that...it’s...no. <em> No</em>. </p><p>He’s bending down, wand in one hand but not the one he’s extending, and the terrifying realisation that he is <em> offering </em> her his hand hits her. That he is intending to help her to her feet. </p><p>His robes are brushing her knees, and she can see herself reflected in the red of his eyes as he bends closer to her; her face washed in crimson. </p><p>Then she’s torn away, and for once she is grateful for the crippling agony of the pull. Because then the only thing she is able to reflect on is how much this involuntary displacement hurts, the pain of being split into millions of tiny particles and tugged topsy turvy through time.</p><p>Just that.</p><p>And not on the expression on his face. Because it had been…</p><p>...it had been <em> fondness.</em></p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Third time, and the violent transition has confused all her senses, she fights against crippling vertigo. Nausea burns her throat, and her nerve endings are frayed with white hot pain. She doesn’t know how many more times she can withstand these jumps, her falling like an injured bird through tangled timelines. Soon enough her body will break from the exertion of it, and if not her body then most certainly her mind. </p><p>At least she landed softly this time. Silver linings and all that.</p><p>With breaths like choking sobs she starts taking in her surroundings. First all she can see is green. Green drapes, she establishes after a few seconds, and then she realises she’s on a bed.</p><p>That was her soft landing. His bed.</p><p>“I haven’t seen you for a while. I’ve wondered.”</p><p>His voice is near, too near, and when she whips her head around he’s right there, next to her, hair sleep-tousled over his forehead and eyes heavy, but alert. She quickly stares at his left cheekbone, avoids his eyes. She doesn’t know how skilled he is yet.</p><p>He’s not surprised at her appearing, she notes, and there is a certain easy familiarity in the way he scoots to the side to make room for her. She thinks that he’s experienced this, her crash landing practically on top of him, a lot more times than <em> she </em> has. At least so far. Inwardly she weeps at the knowledge that she will have to endure this for so much longer.</p><p>She can feel no tug, it seems like she’ll be able to stay for more than just a few seconds, and he affirms that.</p><p>“You’re barely transparent. You have a little while yet.”</p><p>His voice is flat, clinical, like she’s a vexing problem he’s keen to solve. His eyes too, they give no hint of any other emotion than a cold curiosity.</p><p>Before she answers she takes the time to consider him again. Him, and their surroundings. </p><p>His voice is deep, and in the dusky light she sees a very faint hint of stubble on his cheeks and chin. Probably around sixth year, she thinks, not yet head boy, and the drapes around his bed indicates they are in dorms. Slytherin dorms. </p><p>“How…” she starts, and feels her fingers clenching around silken sheets, “how many times has this happened now?”</p><p>He raises a dark brow at her as she shuffles a little further back, creating some distance between them.</p><p>“No need to whisper. I cast <em> Imperturbable </em>on the bed as soon as you arrived.”</p><p>“<em>Imperturbable</em>? But…”</p><p>He interrupts, sure and domineering, even though right now, <em> here </em>, she is some years older than him.</p><p>“I want to see if it will hold you here.”</p><p>“It won’t,” she says, and a small part of her is regretting it even though she shouldn’t, because right now, sitting next to a fledgling monster, she’s not in pain. And right now, not being in pain means <em> everything</em>.</p><p>“I figured as much, but I mean to try.” He’s fully awake now, and she feels skewered by his icy regard. “And to answer your question: eleven.”</p><p>She starts. Eleven times. And that’s just up to his current age, there could be countless occasions beyond that. One has happened to her already, and she is wrecked in shivers as she remembers his red eyes, the...the <em> look </em>in them as he had offered her his hand. </p><p>What could possibly have happened between now and then? </p><p>She will never survive this, she knows. There is no earthly way her body can cope. How could she have miscalculated so gravely, how can she possibly make this right?</p><p>He’s talking to her, she realises.</p><p>“...thought you were a ghost at first, but you are not, are you? You’re something else entirely.”</p><p>“It doesn’t matter,” she answers, vaguely proud that her voice is stronger, no longer so broken apart. She’s having time to recover somewhat, and it is bliss. She stretches her legs out in front of her, arches her back a little, enjoys the pull of her muscles. Who knows when she will have the opportunity for such simple, basic pleasures again?</p><p>“Well, see, that’s where you are wrong. If you continually appear in my orbit it matters. It most certainly <em> matters</em>. And trust me when I say that I mean to find out just how.” His voice is streaked with a chilling promise, his dark eyes burning in contrast; like he wants to sear his declaration into her skin, turn it into a vow. </p><p>She swallows, tries to pull all the threads of herself back together, stitch it all into something vaguely resembling a whole.</p><p>“What’s your name?” he asks, and she wonders if he’d asked that before, and if she had answered. </p><p>“Ariadne,” she says and meets his eyes squarely for the first time. And he, he <em> grins, </em>like he finds such blatant a lie infinitely amusing. Something curls and writhes under her skin.</p><p>“What happened those times before?” she asks, aware that he is,really, her only source of information, that he is the only one she's encountered since all this began.</p><p>His smile is lazy, and it is lethal.</p><p>“You really don’t know? Is it because you don’t remember, or is that…”</p><p>She doesn’t hear the rest. She’s torn apart again, and gone.</p><p>All she’s got time to think is that his <em> Imperturbable </em>most certainly did not work.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>“<em>Got </em> you,” says his voice in her ear, and it’s a deep baritone, sibilant undertones already but not quite. When she tries to turn her head she gets an interrupted view of his profile, and she involuntarily rubs her jaw against his cheek.</p><p>Fine streaks of silver by his temples, a hint of crows feet by his eyes, and the cognitive dissonance between <em> now </em> and last time makes her guts roil.</p><p>They’re not at Hogwarts, she sees immediately. They’re somewhere else entirely, somewhere musty and dark, and there are books everywhere, dark books, she can feel their darkness through her skin.</p><p>“Tell me your name,” he whispers into her temple, and he’s got his arms wrapped about her from behind, holding her tight against him.</p><p>It doesn’t help. She melts away, disappears from within his grasp, and her whispered answer of <em> Leda </em>gets lost with her.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Again.</p><p>She’s honestly losing track of the times. Five? Seven? Much much more? </p><p>She crash lands onto stone, and stays down on the ground, knocked breathless from both the impact and the sensation of being torn apart and put back together again. She’ll never get used to it, she thinks, never ever; the hurt, the trauma, the sheer terror.</p><p>She suspects where she is before she’s even relearnt how to breathe. The sense of a huge underground space, sepulchral and ancient. Massive, twisted stone statues somehow seeming in possession of beating, pulsing hearts. The damp in the air, and the dark magic, seductive and heady and terrifying, curling in her nostrils. </p><p>She sits up, half reclined, supports herself on shaking arms.</p><p>He stands a few yards away, his back to her, all clad in dark, stance as confident and as faltering as a fallen god’s, and he doesn’t turn around when he greets her.</p><p>“Hello, little wraith.”</p><p>“I thought you’d decided I’m not a ghost,” she says, but it’s really just throwing out words she’s not even listening to herself. Her attention is focused where <em> his </em> is, on the deep shadows at the other end of this wretched, underground chamber.</p><p>“Well, I’ve got nothing else to think of you as,” he says over his shoulder, and with the small glimpse of his face she sees a neat beard, as dark as his hair and his eyes. “What’s your name?”</p><p>Not a student here anymore, she’d been mistaken, he’s older, he’s a man grown, broad of shoulder and with pitch black experience sliding along his contours.</p><p>“Epona,” she murmurs absently, busy trying to make out what lives in the shadows across the chamber, even though she <em> knows</em>, of course she knows.</p><p>“Oh you’re so funny,” he sneers, and she can tell that he’s in a bad mood, the foul temper undulating around him, making little darts out into the damp air. He’s practically vibrating with it, and she wonders what might have transpired before she arrived, what might have so ruffled a man she’s not used to see emoting.</p><p>Then she stops thinking about that, because the shadows move closer, unmistakably slithering, unmistakably mythological and terrifying, and she viciously chews apart a whimper before it can leave her mouth.</p><p>“Tom.”</p><p>He still doesn’t turn around. </p><p>“Oh, so you <em> do </em> know my name. I’ve wondered.”</p><p>She immediately wants to spit it from her mouth, but it’s too late. Really, she wants to call him Voldemort but she <em> can’t,</em> because he’s <em> not </em> yet, she’s almost sure of it. So she has to call him Tom even though the soft sound of it hurts her mouth. </p><p>Not to mention that she is irrationally terrified of somehow planting it in his head. That if <em> Voldemort </em> spills from her lips, jagged and torn, she would somehow give birth to the idea within him. <em> Create </em> him. </p><p>“Why are you here?” she asks as she stands, brushes the pain of the stones from her palms, determines to face whatever is coming as tall as she can be. “You’re not a student anymore.”</p><p>“Why are <em> you </em> here?” he counters, “is that not the more pertinent question?”</p><p>Then, his shoulders tense just infinitesimally as he realises something, and as the enormous serpent emerges from the shadows he turns to face her fully. He confidently gives the basilisk his back and skewers her with his eyes. Never before have they looked so much like lava, she thinks, all dark with pinpricks of fiery red. Then she leaves his eyes, looks at his eyebrows instead, determined not to give him entry into her mind and thoughts.</p><p>“Actually, I was wrong. That is <em> not </em> the most pertinent question. Rather, this one is: how do you know we’re at Hogwarts, little wraith? This sacred underground space is hardly known by students or teachers, indeed anyone at all. Have you been here before, pray?”</p><p>She backs away a couple of steps and looks at the floor instead, now having to take care not to meet the eyes of neither man nor beast.</p><p>“I’m not telling you,” she finally says as in her peripheral the enormous serpent slithers around them, scales brushing dryly over stone. Around and around it goes, and he tsks at her.</p><p>“And you know not to meet the gaze of my beautiful beast. Aren’t you an intriguing mystery. Perhaps a dangerous one too. Should I let her take care of you once and for all?”</p><p>She feels strangely calm then, even <em> sure </em>, even though she’s got no reason to, not really. But maybe she knows him a little, just a bit.</p><p>“If you do you’ll never ever find out who I really am. Where I come from.”</p><p>A soft snort, and slow steps coming closer to her.</p><p>“Oh, aren’t you <em> clever</em>.”</p><p>Then he hisses something, sibilant and sinuous, bringing goosebumps up all over her body. She’s never heard anything quite like it, not even from Harry. It’s like an archaic song, something ancient and primal and almost <em> beautiful</em>.</p><p>“There. I’ve ordered her to close her eyes. You may admire her freely, little wraith. I think she likes you. She didn’t even try to kill you.”</p><p>She squints out of the corner of her eye, then opens them fully when she sees that the basilisk’s eyes are indeed closed. </p><p>And what a <em> sight </em> it is. </p><p>The enormous creature is surrounding them both, loosely coiled around them. The massive head is brushing Riddle’s shoulder, and he is stroking its chin. His face is turned into the scales of the basilisk’s face, and his eyes are closed as he hisses things to the creature that she can’t hear, let alone understand. And the way he touches the beast...she blushes. It’s almost... sensual, <em> erotic, </em>those languid movements of his hands; the way one might stroke a lover. </p><p>When he opens his eyes and glances sideways at her can see that his pupils are blown before she averts her own face. His lips slightly parted, movements lazy and heavy.</p><p>“No one knows of course, but I come here as often as I can to see her. She mustn’t feel lonely. She is the most beautiful being in the world.”</p><p>And oh how she wishes that she would be ripped away now, be gone, but nothing happens. He smirks at her as he seems to read her mind despite her being so careful not to give up her eyes.</p><p>“I’ve noticed something,” he says, and his eyes burn with hellfire and his mouth curls in glee.</p><p>“What?” she whispers.</p><p>“You’re staying longer and longer. <em> Sure</em>, there are occasions still when you’re with me for mere seconds, but they are farther and farther between. Sometimes...sometimes  you’re with me for <em> hours</em>.” He tilts his head, the basilisk’s massive chin now fairly resting on his shoulder, and he strokes it gently, reverently, as he continues. “Or didn’t you know?”</p><p>Of course she doesn’t know, it hasn’t happened to <em> her </em> yet. </p><p>“I’m pretty sure it means nothing,” she lies and wishes wishes <em> wishes </em> that she could put some distance between him and her. But she is trapped by the body of a mythological creature and she would weep if she had the energy.</p><p>But she is much too tired.</p><p>“Is it a curse?” he asks suddenly.</p><p>He’s using her exhaustion against her, of course, ruthless in the way he wishes to excavate her, bare her to the dank air. Oh, what does it matter? </p><p>“A spell, a potion, gone wrong,” she says, feeling hopeless, feeling sure she’ll never ever find her way back or achieve her goal.</p><p>The triumph in his eyes is something heinous, as bright as the morning star, and he pushes his advantage with glee.</p><p>“When you’re not with me, where are you?”</p><p>“Nowhere,” she whispers, too fast, too sloppy, made dumb by despair, and then her eyes widen a fraction because she’s said too much. Far too much.</p><p>Now he knows that the spell is somehow tied to him.</p><p>She’s almost thankful when she can feel herself split apart, even though she screams with pain all the while.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>This time she flickers into existence outside and she could almost weep with it. Because he’s always <em> inside</em>, in dark rooms bent over his black books and even darker spells, and this is the first time she has felt fresh air and smelt dew and rain and rotting leaves and wild herbs in eons.</p><p>He’s standing on the edge of a cliff with his arms raised, robes billowing in furious night winds, and she can hear waves crashing far below. She digs her fingers into lush, sodden grass, tries to ground herself, before she leaves the comfort of the earth and stands.</p><p>He whips around, and smiles when he sees her. An almost true smile, she thinks, it looks like it might be <em> real </em>. He’s distinguished looking, even with the winds making him look wild, untempered. Clean shaven and with the grey at his temples again, and she thinks this might be the best of him, the best he ever was before the maelstrom sucked him down. Indeed, she can taste the raw power of him like thunder on her tongue.</p><p>“You’re here. I’ve <em> missed </em> you.”</p><p>And he eats up the few steps separating them, wolfs them down and reaches her faster than she can bear. Grabs her wrists, tugs them behind her back, and she freefalls because she doesn’t think he’s touched her before. Only, clearly he <em> has </em>, because jerking her wrists behind her back he forces her breasts into him, before taking her mouth like he owns it. Familiar and sure in his possession, and she doesn’t think she’s ever felt anything like this. Like lightning reverberating inside her bones, electricity sparking between her fingertips and he smiles and growls into her mouth. He licks into her, as she can feel one of his hands letting go of her wrists and travelling down the neckline of her dress. Delicately circling a nipple before pinching so hard that she whines in pain and rapture.</p><p>“Oh, yes,” he whispers, “you like this. You <em> always </em> like this. Hard. <em> Undeniable</em>.”</p><p>She breaks away from him then, panting, and her insides burn with self loathing and disgust even if she doesn’t even know yet <em> where </em> it went wrong. <em> When </em> it went wrong, and <em> how</em>. How she could…</p><p>He lets her go, allows her a couple of steps back.</p><p>“What’s the matter, my dear? Can’t remember? Don’t <em> know</em>? Well, get up to speed quickly, I’m not a patient man.”</p><p>She believes him. Even in the darkness of night she can see how the eclipse of his pupils swallow his eyes alive, how he flushes high on his pale cheeks and how his pulse beats on his throat. Absurdly she remembers the basilisk, he had looked like this with the basilisk and...</p><p>What is...when did they…? </p><p>She looks beyond his shoulder. The setting moon is but a shard in the sky, and it looks sharp and deadly. She wants to pluck it from its place in the heavens and run him through with it for making her feel like this. </p><p>For making her <em> yearn</em>.</p><p>Then...<em>gone</em>.<br/><br/><br/><br/></p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><hr/><p>Backwards, oh backwards again, to his youth, and she wonders about the whiplash to her mind. Will the damage be permanent? Will it eat away at synapses and cells and atoms until there is nothing left of her?</p><p>She’s standing by the one window in his room above Borgin and Burkes, and he lounges on the bed because there is nowhere else to sit. She looks down on Knockturn Alley through the warped glass, studies the hubbub, all these people out on illicit errands, and she envies the normalcy out of her reach. She fancies she can feel the feral magic from all those dark artifacts in the shop below, feel it seep through the floorboards and into her bones, making her skin burn, her hair crackle.</p><p>She turns her back to the window and studies Tom. </p><p>In his twenties, she thinks, strikingly handsome and with arctic eyes, snowfall in his gaze. Aloof and contemptuous. Unmistakably <em>dark</em>. He’s still trying to hide it, but she knows it’s only a matter of a few short years before he’ll hide nothing at all.</p><p>He’s reading right now, demonstrable in the way he’s ignoring her. She doesn’t know what ostensibly has his attention so captured, she can’t see the book from where she stands. When she first arrived he had asked her name and she had told him Idunn and he had scoffed. Then he left her alone, content to let her haunt the edges of his room.</p><p>He appears to be learning ever more about how long she may stay, seems to be getting better at reading her contours more accurately. They are stable and whole today, she can see so herself when she holds her arms up against the dim light of the window. That she may stay put a little longer.</p><p>It seems to make him calmer, make him allow her some space, some desperately needed room to think and pull her logic about her. Assess her situation. She hasn’t had that luxury before, it’s been just fast, impossible transitions and unbearable pain.</p><p>A few minutes ago, she tried to leave the room. She couldn't. She got as far as the door before some invisible force firmly held her back, refused her exit. </p><p>With her whispered <em>fuck</em>! she could hear his faint snort behind her.</p><p>So, she’s tied to him. Can be only where he is. She really, really messed the whole thing up. Desperation and despair had made her sloppy and careless. Acting with her hands and clothes soaked in her best friends’ blood had thrown her badly off course, warped her aim.</p><p>“Are you just going to sit there all day?” she finally asks, restless and claustrophobic, unsure when she’ll be pulled away again.</p><p>As if this is the signal he has been waiting for, he slams his book shut with a sound harsh enough to make her jump, then slides off the bed with unhurried, near feline grace. Stalks towards her where she stands, and against her own will she backs up against the window. He looks dangerous, she thinks, lethal and mordant and bursting at the seams with power as dark as midnight.</p><p>He gets all the way up in her space, chest against chest, she is inhaling his exhales, and she wonders again at the freefall. That she feels so heavy, like she would fall from up high and gain speed faster than light on her way down. And she feels twitchy and fretful, because she remembers, she remembers his kiss. And the way he touched her body like he knew it intimately, like...like he <em>owned</em> it. Owned <em>her</em>.</p><p>The way she responded. How it had <em>felt</em>. Grounding. Freeing. Paradoxal. Terrifying. </p><p>Only, it hasn’t happened yet. Her body is recalling a future memory and her head spins with implications, with what-ifs.</p><p>And the Riddle in front of her now looks more disposed to strangling her than kissing her. </p><p>“Does it hurt?” he murmurs. </p><p>“Does what hurt?” she answers, trying keep her voice steady, trying to get away but he’s got her boxed in and there is nowhere for her to run. Stubbornly she refuses to meet his eyes and she can feel his amused chuckle reverberate through her own body with their closeness. She gets the distinct feeling that he toys with her, that he could take whatever he wants when he wants, he just chooses not to. For now.</p><p>“When you arrive. When you leave again. See, you’ve always got this look of acute agony on your face and, well…” his tongue flicks out as if to taste the small strip of air between them, “it’s <em>delicious</em>.”</p><p>She can’t say anything, her words are stuck. They are trapped on her tongue, heavy and sticky and bitter, and she struggles to dislodge them.</p><p>He pushes ever closer, she can feel him along her entire body, she can feel his breath warm on her brow as with faux gentleness he tucks a wild curl behind her hair.</p><p>“Well?” he whispers with his lips close to her ear, almost touching, and her toes curl and her blood rush with bleak anxiety and excitement. She wonders if this will be the first time they’ll...they’ll…</p><p>“It hurts like nothing I’ve ever felt before,” she finally says. “Every time.”</p><p>He pushes back a little then, looks down on her, dark eyes unreadable and wild, and the power about him is so violently dominant that she has to fight the urge to bare her throat at him. Sink to her knees.</p><p>Submit.</p><p>“Worse than the <em>cruciatus</em>?” he wonders, and idly strokes the wand she hadn’t even noticed him get out. </p><p>And she, she remembers screaming on the Malfoys’ priceless rug, screaming and screaming until her voice broke into teeny tiny pieces. He gets a queer look on his face then, almost...confused, and she knows she slipped up, that he saw her memory, is trying to fit it into a narrative that he’s familiar with but can’t.</p><p>It doesn’t exist yet.</p><p>“Worse,” she tries to deflect, and anyway, it’s true. She swallows, fumbles with her hands behind her, scrabbles over the window sill, trying to find some kind of purchase in solidity.</p><p>He smiles down at her, locks of dark hair falling over his forehead, throwing shades like bird wings over his face. </p><p>“Good,” he whispers. </p><p>Then he pushes away from her and returns to the bed and his book, and studiously ignores her for as long as she remains there.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>She tumbles onto cobblestones, skins the palms of her hands raw. Picks herself up, gets her foot caught on the hem of her dress and has to brace herself against the rough wooden wall of a building. She swears impotently as she rights herself and looks around, her heart beating pain evenly all the way around her body.</p><p>She appears to be in a back alley, filth and trash and bottles littering the ground before her feet. The tattered, dilapidated buildings are leaning so heavily against each other that they are almost meeting in the air above her head, making the alley more like a tunnel, steeped in perpetual grey light. </p><p>She wagers that she’s not overly far from Knockturn Alley.</p><p>It rains, insistently, mindlessly, the sort of bleak rain that will soak through any clothing in minutes. Her hair is plastered against her forehead, and she shivers.</p><p>And just ahead of her there is Tom, stopped in his tracks. He turns around and immediately stalks towards her, long steps, and she recoils at the anger on his face. He’s dressed entirely in black, and between his dark hair and pale face he appears ghoulish, stygian in the dusky half light of the alley. She forces herself to stay put, refuses to show weakness and step backwards. She’d shown quite enough weakness already.</p><p>“This is highly inconvenient. You really can be the most vexatious of creatures,” he hisses as he reaches her, and roughly grabs her arm. “Come along. I don’t need any undue attention right now.”</p><p>He pulls her with him, and she goes. She can’t exactly run in the opposite direction anyway, she thinks bitterly, having tied herself to him so effectively. Too effectively. </p><p>A couple of streets later he pulls her into a rundown doorway, the stoop at danger of falling down over their heads, rain echoing off the tin roof. </p><p>“We’ll Apparate from here. Where’s your wand?”</p><p>She says nothing, stays quiet for long enough that his fingers dig harshly into her arm, leaves little crescent indents under her dress sleeve, she can feel them.</p><p>“Lost it at the beginning of…all this,” she finally admits through clenched jaws, and she tries to temper it, the loss. The unimaginable feeling of being without a body part, a limb, made all the more helpless and stranded. Not that she thinks a wand would get her out of this mess, but it certainly would’ve made her feel stronger.</p><p>He clenches his jaw.</p><p>“Fine. Come here.”</p><p>And he wraps his arm around her waist, pulls her in towards him. Her nose is pressed into the hollow at the base of his throat, and she inhales him, pitch black power and smoke, nights without stars, bone-coloured moons. Then he Side-Alongs with her, and it’s a breeze really, this little hop through space, so simple and smooth, nothing like the way she’s been shorn to pieces by time.</p><p>They appear in his room above Borgin and Burkes, and she pulls away from him, creating distance. He’s content to let her, walks instead over to the little table, pulls something out of his pocket and drops it atop a few of his books.</p><p>It glints green, and she can’t help herself, she walks closer. There’s something about it, resonances of a deeply malevolent force she remembers from her own time.</p><p>And of course she recognises it, recognises it immediately. </p><p>“Slytherin’s locket,” she murmurs and shudders in revulsion, in a remembered future of fear and suffering. And she knows the errand he’s just been on, she knows why he didn’t want to be seen. </p><p>Such casual murderer. </p><p>He turns to her with her words.</p><p>“You recognise the locket. So you are of old family? Slytherin?”</p><p>The near-hope on his face is almost beautiful to her, and she relishes ripping it away. She smiles at him. She can feel the pull, the tug, the beginning of agony, but this she must get out, this she must tell him to his face before she goes.</p><p>“Absolutely not,” she whispers clearly. </p><p>As she disappears she enjoys his blank face with red in his eyes, and she clearly enunciates her last words:</p><p>“I’m as far from it as it’s possible to get.”</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The next time he’s no longer in England. </p><p>Italy, she thinks, as she listens to the chatter on the street below. The room is without lights but the shutters are open, inviting tumbling sunbeams that look almost solid across the small space. She walks over the rough hewn wooden floor towards it, steps into the light and glories at the feel of warmth against her skin. The sun. She hasn’t felt or seen the sun in so long. She studies her arms in the light. Her contours seem soluble, shimmering as if seen through extreme heat, and she knows she won’t stay overlong. But perhaps, just perhaps, long enough to rest.</p><p>Because he’s asleep. He’s on a narrow cot right next to the window, wearing only trousers, an arm thrown across his eyes. He seems...near peaceful in rest. His handsome features relaxed somewhat, his lips softened, looking almost boyish, though he must be about thirty now. His upper body is lean and alabaster, she notes, before she averts her eyes, remembering that night in the future when he had kissed her and she had liked it. He’s got a beard here, and she doesn’t know if <em>now</em> is before or after their meeting in the Chambers of Secrets. </p><p>She studies the room. Simple, with just the small bed, a table and two chairs. A washstand over in the corner, holding a chipped wash basin and water pitcher of enamel. The table is laden with books, and some oranges. A few items of clothing are carelessly thrown over one of the chairs. It is...cozy, warm, imbued with the sense of a lost time. Far removed from his dreary room above Burgin and Burkes.</p><p>She picks up one of the oranges, plays with it, enjoys the shape and the texture as she considers her situation. She can’t leave, she doesn’t even bother to try the door. She sits down by the far wall instead, kicks off her shoes, and slowly peels the orange, eats it segment by segment, juice dripping down her chin. Every little moment of it shines bright with reality; tactile, lush. It is blissful, she thinks, and lets her head fall back against the wall. She enjoys this increasing slowness, <em>time</em>, that she’s getting now. Future him had been..<em>.will be</em>... correct when he noted that she stays longer and longer, and she fights uselessly against the skewed sensation that he is becoming the only solid thing in her world. No use in fighting the notion, she thinks desperately, because he is, he has become a terrible anchor.</p><p>Her fiercely logical side acknowledges that it’s hardly strange that she feels like this; she only feels <em>real</em> when with him, the rest of the time she is a spectre in the ether, unbodied and mindless. A wraith, as he will call her a few years hence. No wonder then that she has begun to see him as someone to cling to, be real with. </p><p>Such twisted relief, an illusion really, cruel and beautiful.</p><p>She wants to wrest her thoughts away from him, but then she thinks of her best friends, dead and broken, and how she is failing to unmake it. She can’t bear that either. Instead she attempts to quiet her mind, empty it. Float for just a little bit, here in this dusky but sun-warmed old room. </p><p>She refuses to admit it, but his deep, sleeping breaths lulls her, and she uses the sharp sting of the juices from the orange on her grazed palms to ensure she doesn’t slip too far.</p><p>She doesn’t sleep, not really. Instead she hovers somewhere in the hinterlands between waking and oblivion, floats on his breaths and the distant din from the street below. Weightless and free. </p><p>Just for a while.</p><p>Eventually she fully opens her half-shut eyes, stretches, then stands. She’s surprised she’s still here. She walks over to the window to better take in this place where he’s chosen to come, but her wrist is gripped in a vice on her way. </p><p>She looks down. He’s still prone on the bed, eyes shut, but the arm previously over his face is now holding her firm.</p><p>“What’s your name?”</p><p>She huffs out a little laugh, just a gentle touch of air between her lips.</p><p>“Hermione,” she says, and he smiles a little.</p><p>“Still with that game. One day I’ll find out your real name, you know. And there’s power in a name. When I have it it will be mine, and mine alone.”</p><p>Then he opens his eyes.</p><p>“How long have you been here?”</p><p>She pulls a little against his grip, but the resistance is symbolic really, because...because it’s nice to have something holding her still, grounding her in this thundering, roiling storm of time. </p><p>Even if it’s him.</p><p>She shakes her head. </p><p>“For a while.  And to think that you would sleep through me arriving, me sharing your space.”</p><p>He smiles a little, somehow it’s both warm and cold. Mostly cold. </p><p>“I am used to you by now, you know. You’ve literally fallen in and out of my life since my childhood.”</p><p>She refuses to acknowledge his heavy eyes, the way he holds her wrist too hard, but most of all the implication that he feels comfortable around her. </p><p>Because she can’t bear it.</p><p>“You’re hurting me,” she finally says, and his eyes are as hard as flint.</p><p>“I won’t apologise,” he murmurs, “I don’t have it in me to be gentle. And I don’t think you would deserve it anyway.”</p><p>She can’t quite understand how calm he is, so languid, not when she had all but told him that she’s a Muggleborn when she last saw him. Unless of course he has met her more times between then and now. </p><p>He distracts her from her thoughts by running his thumb roughly across her palm and she jumps, sucks in a breath of pain. He sits up on the bed, alert, and grabs her hands in both of his, turns her palms over. He looks at the raw skin, then up into her face. She hastily turns her eyes away, looking somewhere beyond him.</p><p>“I remember you scraping your hands,” he says slowly. “Back in London.” He tugs her closer towards him, tries to pull her in between his spread legs. “Two years ago.”</p><p>He studies her palms closer, as if he can divine whether the grit and dirt stuck in them comes from streets around Knockturn Alley or not, and she can’t stand it anymore. She rips herself loose, runs across the floor towards the door. She knows of course that she won’t get out, her own magic has seen to that, but it’s dumb panic carrying her now, nothing else. </p><p>She can hear him shoot from the bed behind her, can hear his bare feet on the floor in pursuit. Then she feels the pull of time, and she giggles hysterically.</p><p>Shame, she thinks as she fades, she had liked this little room somewhere in Italy.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The next time she materialises in front of him he is bent over large tomes. He barely looks up at her arrival, so very intent on the books. It gives her time to try to localise herself. Where? <em>When</em>?</p><p>Still not in England, she ascertains. Another inn or boarding house, it seems, about as simple as last time, but with exotic tapestries on the walls. Beautiful colours, people and animals and flowers. Intricately decorated earthenware on the little chest over by the corner.</p><p>Africa, she thinks. Perhaps somewhere in Africa. And she doesn’t even want to consider what Riddle might be doing here. So much ancient magic, rich and heady on the air. She can feel it, on her tongue, in her nostrils, heavy about her hair. And what can he do with it all, she wonders, how can he make it <em>his</em>?</p><p>She considers him, steps a little closer. Still with the beard, not quite so neat now, dark. His cheeks a little more hollow, his skin that bit paler. Kinetic energy and demons just underneath his skin even when he’s ostensibly in repose like this. Not so much older than when she saw him last, and she’s getting the sense that her jumps are becoming less senseless. More linear. She doesn’t know what it might mean, but at least she’s getting to breathe a bit, at least she’s getting more <em>time</em>.</p><p>His dark eyes are still intent on the pages, wolfing down the words, the knowledge. She recognises herself in that. Her fingers itch to touch the books, immerse herself.</p><p>Forget for a while.</p><p>Then she sees Marvolo Gaunt’s ring gleaming dully on his finger, and some of her resolve returns to her. Makes her focus again. </p><p>And like he can feel her mind steadying he looks up from his books, his eyes as sharp and triumphant as she’s ever seen them. His words fall from his lips like little razor blades, keen and deadly. She can feel them sticking to her arteries, warm blood coagulating over cold steel.</p><p>“You time travel, don’t you?” he says. “That smell about you when you arrive. Like a thunderstorm. Ozone.”</p><p>She approaches the table, looks closer at the books before him. Quantum physics. Einstein. Time travel. Muggle and magic. She feels hot and cold and breathing is hard, but she’s being ridiculous, really. Of course he would figure it out. She’s only surprised it’s taken him this long.</p><p>He continues, arms behind his head, a picture of casual death. </p><p>“Your clothes give nothing away. Are you from the past? I don’t think you’re contemporary. Just a feeling.”</p><p>Paradoxically, him unearthing some of the truth is making her feel...wild. Reckless. Breathless. </p><p>Hopeless.</p><p>A lethal combination, apparently, because she readily gives him the truth with her mouth, without having it forced from her eyes.</p><p>“No. I’m from tomorrow.”</p><p>He stills then, becomes so terrifyingly, awfully <em>still</em>. A predator scented to blood, to prey, to <em>opportunity</em>.</p><p>“From the future,” he whispers, mostly to himself. “My little wraith is from the future.”</p><p>He stands from his chair then, and she finds herself reaching for a wand that isn’t there, a worthless, impotent muscle memory. She backs up a couple of steps instead, trying to create distance. A vain endeavour in a room this small, a room she can’t leave.</p><p>“Now I know the <em>how</em>. I don’t know the <em>why</em>,” he says as he rounds the table and comes for her, grabs her about her chin, long fingers caressing her jaw. </p><p>“You’re still a little mystery. And do you know what I want to do to mysteries?”</p><p>His face is coming down towards hers, and she closes her eyes but it’s like she can see him still, the outlines of him white hot against her eyelids. </p><p>“I want to make them <em>mine. Own</em> them. Take them apart, eat them, swallow them whole.”</p><p>And then he kisses her, and she groans into his mouth, scrabbles with her fingers against his shoulders. It’s darkness like she can’t believe, and she’s responding to it, so help her. Her body recalling something that hasn’t happened yet, that violent kiss in the future that had unmade her.</p><p>“I want to sup on your marrow,” he whispers into her mouth, forcing her to swallow the words whole. “I want to dine on you, make a banquet out of you. Yes. And I think you’ll let me, won’t you? Because as you said to me in the Chamber: when you’re not with me you’re nowhere. I’m all you’ve got.”</p><p>She pulls away, finally, sucking in breaths, trying to regain something like equilibrium. He refuses her distance though, as merciless in this as he is in everything else. He grabs her long hair, wraps it around his fist and pulls her head back so that her neck stretches taut, as graceful and white and fragile as the handle of a bone china cup. And this way he forces on her an intimacy much greater than a kiss; her chest pushes forward into his and their hearts vibrate into each other.</p><p>“Should I do that? Get inside, open you up?” he asks, his voice a growl now, his eyes so intent she’s having to squint against the fire in them. “Perhaps I could get at the truth like that. Perhaps I could read your marrow like tea leaves.” His lips finds the beating pulse on her throat, sucks on it. </p><p>And her mind feels like it’s come unmoored a little, shifting in place like a loose tooth, and she doubts she can hang on to it hard enough, for long enough. She realises that she can no longer lean on the vain notion that she’ll <em>finally</em> arrive in the right time and place. </p><p>Because she won’t. Not in time.</p><p>She will simply have to just kill him, first real chance she gets.</p><p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><hr/><p>She curses the fact that she moves forward again. She would have liked to go backwards, back to a Tom not yet so full of lethal knowledge. It would have given her time to compose herself. Come up with a plan. Forget the way he kissed her, the way he will kiss her. The things he said. His <em> intent.</em></p><p>Instead she ends up in a jungle. </p><p>Almost unbearably sticky air, even though it’s night. It clings to her skin, humidity turning into a fine sheen of sweat on her face and chest, curling her hair at her temples, her neck. She can see stars and a full moon looking almost unnaturally bright through intertwined branches high, high above her head.  And the noises here ...nocturnal animals that she can’t quite imagine, birds and bats and insects and predators all around in the dark.</p><p>This is a place of power. Wild, raw magic suffuses the air. Such a lot of it, tingling over her skin, meeting and awakening all the corresponding powers inside of her, that deep well of primitive force she was born with, that is intrinsically <em> her</em>. Her fingers curl around an imaginary wand and she bites off a whimper with the need for an outlet.   </p><p>He’s sitting alone by a campfire, and though he must have heard her arrive he gives no indication of it. Instead he swirls his wand above the flames, making them burn higher and hotter. An unsubtle demonstration, she supposes, of how superior to her he is in strength, wandless and lost as she is. </p><p>He wears rough clothing, suitable for exploring or traversing the tropics. His hair is a bit longer than last time, well below his nape and ears. Tousled and wild. She studies that nape, pale and curiously vulnerable, almost offered up to her, and thinks that she could finish it, right here.</p><p>She wonders why he would offer her his back like this. Is it because he trusts her? Or is it because he trusts himself?</p><p>The latter, she thinks bleakly. He trusts himself implicitly, and damn his eyes.</p><p>“Why do you travel around so much?” she asks his turned back.</p><p>In the flickering light from the fire she sees him lifting one shoulder in an infinitesimal shrug. </p><p>“You’re from the future. Why don’t you tell me?”</p><p>At least now she knows for certain that she’s jumped forward.</p><p>With a sigh she sits down next to him on the fallen log he occupies. She’s worn, and her mind is behaving oddly. It’s diving and soaring in broken, uneven spirals, like a bird crashing through the convective loops of a storm cell. She supposes that it’s hardly strange. Of course her mind would be damaged by these mindless time jumps, of course it’s going on forward and rewind at the wrong times. Same times.</p><p>“There are ten years of your...timeline...unaccounted for,” she tells him, playing hopscotch with honesty and truth and wondering if it might fool him. “After murdering Hepzibah Smith for Salazar’s locket you disappeared without a trace.” She casually picks up a stick and enjoys stoking the fire with it, the embers thrown up into the air with movement. “That’s why I asked.”</p><p>There’s a dagger on his lap, an ornate yet primitive looking thing, laden with raw jewels. She wonders where he stole it. She wonders if the blade is sharp. </p><p>“I see,” he says next to her, and out of the corner of her eyes she can see that he’s still turned towards the fire, not looking at her, his eyelashes dark smudges towards his cheeks. </p><p>She throws her stick in the fire, bends to pick another one up. She can feel magic in her, so much magic, denied for too long. She shakes, she might explode, burn higher and hotter than the fire in front of her.</p><p>“And when I re-emerged?”</p><p>She studies the flames licking unnaturally high, and wonders how much truth to give him, how dangerous, how much she might ruin if she fails. Then she decides that she’s got nothing to lose because back in the future he’s already ruined everything anyway.</p><p>“When you re-emerged,” she begins slowly, her knuckles white, her hair static with magic denied an outlet, “you slowly but surely broke everything. Broke the whole world.”</p><p>She thinks of her dead friends and with near supernatural speed, helped along by the magic of this place, she swipes the dagger from his lap. All her force in the movement, and she can feel power inside the ancient object, can feel it near explode in her hand as it ignites and she rushes it towards his heart with all her might.  </p><p>And is brutally stopped, right by his chest, right above his heartbeats. </p><p>He’s got a casual hand up, limp of wrist, insulting, to wandlessly hold back the force of her blow. Mocking her by letting her come so close. In his other hand is his wand, and her sudden movement has pressed it deep into her jugular.</p><p>“I travelled here to find that dagger,” he says conversationally, nodding down at the object held tight in her shaking hand. She’s still trying to push it into his chest, but he’s holding it back without effort. “Incan. It’s an object of great magic. It was used by the Incan high priests, their wizards, to perform human sacrifices.”</p><p>“On their Muggle population?” she snarls, and he shrugs, lips twitching like he’s holding back a smile. </p><p>“More than likely,” he nods, and of course he would want this dagger, this ancient killing instrument, in his possession. </p><p>He looks her over, his eyes dark.</p><p>“So much power in you,” he says slowly, “I can practically see it vibrating around you, feel it at the back of my throat, twining with the old magic of this place. I imagine that with a wand you would be formidable. Not that I intend to find out.”</p><p>He reaches down and effortlessly plucks the dagger from her hand.</p><p>“You came to kill me, of course. That’s what your botched spell is all about.”</p><p>His eyes are more red than anything but she straightens her back, refuses to be a craven.</p><p>“Of course,” she says.</p><p>He laughs, and it’s sincere, that laugh, deep and rich and suffused with true mirth.</p><p>“Oh, I can only reiterate: you truly are delicious.”</p><p>His wand is still pushed into her throat, and she can see it vibrate faintly with the beats of her pulse. And those beats are going too fast, affected by the almost cloyingly deep atmosphere of this place, affected by the murderous rush she just experienced, but most of all affected by the proximity of him. She feels torn to pieces, she feels unnatural, <em> super</em>natural, hot, shivering.</p><p>She wets her dry lips, and his eyes flicker down to catch the movement.</p><p>“What do you want, Tom?” </p><p>He smiles, it is wide and hungry and quite insane.</p><p>“Oh, I want many things, my wraith. But right now I want to fuck you.”</p><p>She can feel a tainted sort of desire at his blunt statement, a dark thing vibrating deep down, fast becoming something <em> true</em>. She can feel her blood rush even faster, warming her skin, a beat like a drum thrumming. Hardly surprising, she thinks, that she would feel like this; she’s been waiting for this to happen since he first kissed her some years into the future. With what he said the last time she saw him. With the wretched, twisted intimacy she’s started to feel around him.</p><p>She would like him to fuck her too, she realises. She would like to feel something concrete and <em> base </em> and instinctive, she would like to feel <em> moored </em>to something.</p><p>It hurts, but she nods against the wand. </p><p>At her consent his eyes darken, then begin to flare, become something monstrous and primeval, something from ancient times. He lowers his wand, but keeps it in his hand.</p><p>“Remove your clothing,” he whispers, and she stands from the log. Without any hesitation she pulls her dress over her head, letting it fall to the ground. Bends down to slide her underwear down her legs, then toes them off on top of the dress.</p><p>He allows his eyes to glide along her entire body for a long moment, before he lands back on her face.</p><p>“You are a beautiful little thing. A delicate wildcat, a hellion to be tamed. I think you’ll find that giving over control, <em> submitting</em>, will clear your busy mind beautifully.” He taps his wand against his thighs. “On your knees.”</p><p>Naked she sinks down onto the soft ground, and he stands from the log, tall above her. Even from her prone position she can see his pulse beating violently against the skin of his throat, and she feels powerful with that, wraps the magic of this place around her body and allows it to warm her. </p><p>He walks a circle around her as she keeps staring straight ahead, listening to her own heartbeats increase in rhythm and power. The expectation, the fear, the desire. She can feel him run his wand down the bumps of her spine, tracing her buttocks, then back up again, lifting her heavy hair from her neck, allowing the night breeze to soothe it just a little.</p><p>“I’ve been waiting for this all my life. Everything, <em> everything </em> around me I’ve always been able to control. Except you. You’ve shown up and then disappeared again on whims entirely unknown to me. You’ve eluded me, a mystery I’ve been unable to solve. You’ve been a nuisance, a threat, but so familiar too.”</p><p>He’s back to facing her, and his eyes are something terrible to behold, blown so impossibly wide with greed and lust and the urge to dominate. She can see him straining against his trousers, the hard outline of his cock laid out towards his hip, and she bites her lip, chews on it. Trying to distract herself from the raw need she is feeling. </p><p>Can’t.</p><p>He traces his wand from the hollow of her throat down her breasts, circles first one nipple, then another, and she shifts her hips, looking for friction that isn’t there. </p><p>“Your wrists,” he whispers, “give me your wrists.”</p><p>She holds them out, and with a swirl of his wand a vine from one of the trees ties her hands securely together in front of her. </p><p>“I don’t trust you,” he explains, and she supposes she can’t argue with that, having just tried her best to cleave his heart in two. He bends and grabs her twined wrists, uses them to pull her upright, and then he kisses her. All of his shadows slips onto her tongue and down her throat with that kiss, she swallows all the night inside of him, all the sharpness and avarice. He dominates, bends her backwards, licks into her mouth, sucks on her tongue, and she whines with need.</p><p>“I’m going to eat you alive. Devour you,” he whispers, and hooks her wrists on a branch on the tree next to them, over her head, making her body to taut and long. Helpless, aflame, and supplication is a shimmering thing, clinging to her eyelashes, her lips, her hair. </p><p>He runs hard fingertips along the contours of her, leaves fingerprints on her flanks, her breasts, her thighs. Bends and sucks a nipple into his mouth, bites down, and chuckles at her sharp intake of breath, the way her hips jerk, how her nipple pebble. </p><p>“You like the pain, don’t you? You like giving in. It’s always the wild ones, the fierce ones, feeling truly free only with a loss of control, with <em> being told what to do</em>.”</p><p>And he runs his hands back down to her thighs, drawing harsh runes on the insides of them with his fingertips, then travelling inwards, to the very apex of her.</p><p>“As I thought. You are <em> dripping</em>.” </p><p>His voice is a growl now, his breaths coming hard and fast. He walks around her, presses his front to her back, leaves little bite marks all over her neck. Sucks a line down her back, goes down on his knees and bites both her buttocks in turn, then spreads them with his hands, holding her wide open and exposed to him. He leans forward and licks into her from behind, long laving strokes, and she’s up on her toes, pulling hard against her bindings, muttering incomprehensible things as he goes. He gives little bites and nips along with the licks, and she is crying out now, because this can’t be contained, it’s <em> impossible</em>. Not what he’s forcing her to feel, the violent heave of sensations ruling her body. She’s shuddering with it, waves of madness lapping at her feet, so close, so close to something…</p><p>Then he stops.</p><p>She doesn’t recognise the sound she makes as something human, but she can still hear his low chuckle at her distress.</p><p>“Not yet. You’ll come around me or not at all.”</p><p>Then he’s back in front of her, undressing, the look on his face darkly bloodthirsty and rapacious. She studies him entirely without guile as each part comes uncovered, curious and fascinated and with a tremble in her arms, down her sides.</p><p>He is beautiful as he stands naked before her, slender, long hard lines. So many riveting parts to him, sculptural plains and angles. Ghosts sliding over his skin, over bold alignments of structure and bone.</p><p>He puts his hands on her waist and grinds himself into her, and she can feel how hard he is against her stomach, how hot and how ready. He slides his fingers down to her again, slips along wetness and want, circles, tests, stretches, and she bucks, can feel how that deep seated ache grows fierce and high inside her again.</p><p>“You’re ready for me,” he says, and she leans her forehead on his shoulder. </p><p>“Come inside,” she asks, and she can hear how wretched and broken her own voice is.</p><p>He lifts her up, wraps her legs around his waist, then takes his cock in hand. Strokes himself once, twice, before lining himself up and pressing inside, eking out a whole new space within her as he goes. Then he snaps, growls, and seats himself as deep he can go with one forceful thrust, and she stiffens with the pain of it, grinding her teeth against the urge to cry out. </p><p>He stills, sweeps her hair out of her face, grabs her chin.</p><p>“You…”</p><p>“Yes, but don’t stop,” she says fiercely, “don’t you dare stop. Don’t go gentle, I don’t want you to be gentle.”</p><p>“I’ve no intention of being gentle, wraith,” he bites out, “I don’t think I can.” </p><p>And he resumes, thrusting hard and deep, and yes, this is what she was after when she acquiesced to him; this living pain, this curling need, this <em> possession</em>, cancelling out all noise. Because with him impaling her, and her fresh blood singing and flowing all around him, she can forget everything else.</p><p>“Harder,” she says, “harder.”</p><p>And he speeds up, holds her hips impossibly hard, fingers digging into her soft skin, and he slams her down on him again and again. His head is thrown back, his face is a snarl, tendons standing out like rope on his neck.</p><p>“You’re mine now,” he grinds, “no one else’s. Just mine.”</p><p>And when he slips a finger around and presses down on her just right, she’s forced to let go, comes violently and unexpectedly, a rush of dark magic surrounding her, stars dying and turning supernova behind her clenched eyelids. Her scream mingles with the cry of the night birds of the jungle, with the sound of crickets and the pulsing, ancient power about this place. And he follows her, his hips stuttering into more and more uneven strokes until he clamps down on her neck with his teeth, breaks skin, and he empties deep inside her, a feral sound ripping from somewhere far within the hollow of his chest.</p><p>Then...<em> silence </em> in her head, for the first time since all this started. Like interrupted tinnitus, sudden quiet after eons of piercing noise. </p><p>It’s blissful, and she floats on it, craves it, can never be without it again, she’s entirely sure of it.</p><p>When she regains her bearings she’s hanging with her head between her raised arms, her flanks are heaving and she’s covered in a sheen of sweat. He pulls out of her, unhooks her from the tree, picks her up in his arms and carries her over to the fire. Lays her on top of his cloak and he is almost gentle. Follows her down, and wraps a hard arm around her waist, like he thinks that will keep her in place. </p><p>Nothing will.</p><p>“How many times?” </p><p>Her voice is drowsy, and she’s struggling to stay awake.</p><p>“What’s that?”</p><p>His voice is low too, roughness around the edges.</p><p>“How many times have we met now?”</p><p>His hand strokes her stomach in lazy circles. She can feel her blood mingling with his release on the inside of her thighs. </p><p>“More times than I can count. You truly don’t know?”</p><p>She shivers a little and moves closer into him, even if he’s the one making her cold.</p><p>“You know I don’t. It’s mostly non-linear. Backwards and forwards with no rhyme nor reason.”</p><p>He hums a little into her hair.</p><p>“What was the spell? That went wrong?”</p><p>“A potion,” she says. “I was always so good at potions.” She bites the inside of her cheek, remembering Severus Snape and a sacrifice too great to be borne. “This one I had to invent myself. A...a tracking potion of sorts. Designed to bring me to you, unfailingly. I brewed and prepared for the longest time, it was the most complicated and intricate thing I’ve ever undertaken.” She curls her legs up, grasps her knees. “I broke a Time-Turner and poured its sand in the cauldron. I..added something that once belonged to you...and…”</p><p>She quiets, recalls melting down some of the fragmented pieces of Slytherin’s locket. She had saved some of them on an unknown, irrational impulse after Ron had destroyed it. She added it to the potion thinking that something that had once contained a piece of Tom Riddle’s soul would only make it stronger, more unerring. Now she wonders if it’s what had made the whole thing so unstable. Trapped her in time.</p><p>“It was meant to bring me back just two years or so, right to you. So time wouldn’t be meddled with too much. So that I could…”</p><p>“...kill me,” he finishes for her, and laughs drily behind her, but his hand holds her hip far too hard, adds bruises on top of bruises. She’ll look like an abstract painting, she thinks, come morning she’ll be a dark, living art piece. She’s already wanting to chase that addictive silence again, the quiet he had given her by stringing her body up and along, by forcing her to bend and stop thinking. </p><p>The same man who had razed Hogwarts clean to the ground and slaughtered everyone in is his way. Who had mercilessly hunted them down and two years after his decisive victory finally torn Harry and Ron to pieces. She had never understood how she alone managed to get away. </p><p>“Yes,” she says firmly. “Kill you.”</p><p>He huffs a laugh, then pulls her leg back and over his side, before entering her again in one cruel push, helped along by her blood and his spend. She whines, sore and sensitive, and he holds her harder against him.</p><p>“We’ll see about that,” he whispers in her ear, before biting down on his mark on her neck, sucking on it, and moving slowly within her, intent on taking his time. She arches and pushes back against him, running after the silence inside her head, reaching it when he makes her come apart with a particularly hard thrust, bruising her insides in the must acute and unbearable and irresistible way.</p><p>Afterwards she lies with her eyes wide open, panting, tasting the air. Feeling herself.</p><p>“I think I’ll still stay for a while,” she says out into the dark. “I’m perfectly solid still. I want to wash my dress. Will you untie me?”</p><p>The dress is in a heap on the ground, covered in soot and ashes, and suddenly nothing is more important than feeling clean.</p><p>He nods against her back, reaches around to unmake the vine around her wrists.</p><p>“There’s a natural pool, just beyond here. See that tree, cloven by lightning? Behind there.”</p><p>So she untangles from him, and walks naked to the little pool, hollowed out in the bedrock by thousands of years of icy water trickling from the mountain tops. She wades into it, and the water is perfect; clear and brazing. She goes down on her knees, grabs handfuls of fine sand from the bottom and scrubs her dress with it. She could have asked him to clean her it for her with a tap of his wand, and perhaps he would even have obliged her, but she enjoys this. Need it. She sinks into the repetitive movements, allows her mind to come away from her and glide along the surface of the moon-drenched water. Feels his spend and her blood wash away from her. Everything is still quiet and clear, just as he had promised. Peaceful.</p><p>Such wretched peace, glimmering like fool’s gold, gained at almost too heavy a price.</p><p>But she knows she will do it again.</p><p>She looks up, and he’s standing by the edge of the water looking at her, the moon turning his pale body luminescent, darkening the wolfish hunger in his eyes to something like obsidian.</p><p>“What’s your name?” he asks softly.</p><p>“I already told you.”</p><p>Their eyes meet, and they say nothing at all as she disappears. <br/><br/></p><hr/><p> </p><p>“Well. You’ve made many peculiar entrances, but I’d say this one tops them all.”</p><p>She’s naked on the floor in his room in London, holding her sodden dress in her hands. Shivering. </p><p>He’s by his blasted reading table, tomes about the dark arts in unsteady piles all around him. She supposes she should be grateful that he hadn’t been out somewhere public. </p><p>She looks at him, finds it hard to consolidate his clean shaven face and neat hair with the rugged, unyielding man she had fucked in the rainforest. She stands up, shakes her wet hair, holds the dress in front of her.</p><p>“Have you got something I could borrow while my dress dries?”</p><p>He shrugs and rolls his eyes, and stands from the chair, pulls a battered old suitcase from underneath the narrow bed. Measured, precise movements. Comes up with a white shirt that ought to hit her well below her knees. </p><p>“Thanks,” she says, drops the dress and reaches for the shirt, before realising what she’s doing, that she shouldn’t be this casual or comfortable around this version of him. </p><p>He’s stopped in his tracks, runs his gaze along her entirely exposed body, almost despite himself, eyes half lidded, and she wonders if this is where it starts for him. If this is where he begins to see her differently, as someone to desire and own, and she wants to laugh hysterically at the tangle she’s made, all the kinks and knots. How both of their feelings began in the wrong timelines and wouldn’t be real,<em> exist</em>, otherwise.</p><p><em> Fuck</em>.</p><p>Then he steps closer, and runs a finger along the livid bite mark on her neck, studies the wreaths of bruises on her hips and thighs and breasts. </p><p>“Who did this to you?”</p><p>She meets his eyes, just for a second, before looking away.</p><p>“It’s very complicated,” is all she says, before pulling the shirt over her head. </p><p>When he sits down on the bed she sits down too, next to him, shoulders slumped and head hanging low. Exhausted, and with a heavy, satiated feeling in her body, both pleasant and unpleasant. She hopes she can stay long enough to sleep for a while. She hopes that he’ll let her.</p><p>“What’s your name?” he asks mechanically, an old habit by now, and she sees that he’s looking at her exposed shoulder where the collar of his shirt has slid down.</p><p>“Diana,” she answers just as mechanically. </p><p>Then she bursts into tears, loud sobs, shuddering breaths. It’s the first time she’s wept since all this started, and it’s a release, certainly, but not as strong or effective as the one the man sitting next to her will grant her in a jungle about ten years from now.</p><p>Tom stays quiet beside her, studying her tears like they’re an unknown curiosity.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p> </p><p>She’s back to him being a child, and she can’t bear it.</p><p>It’s the youngest she’s seen him, a toddler sitting on a cold floor, alone, rolling a tatty old ball back and forth. Dark hair, dark eyes, round cheeks. </p><p>He’d barely reacted when she arrived out of thin air, simply given her a solemn look then continued rolling his ball.</p><p>Back and forth, back and forth.</p><p>She’s been here about an hour or two now, she’s pretty sure, and in that time no one’s come to check on him. A small boy, not yet out of nappies, alone in a closed room, and she thinks she can allow a part of her heart to break for him. He’s too young to remember her and her tears anyway.</p><p>She sits opposite him on the floor, and tries not to contemplate how easy it would be to end it here. A fragile child, a baby; a life only just begun could so easily be turned back around. But she shakes that thought away, and attempts to encourage him to roll the ball to her.</p><p>He won’t.</p><p>She smiles and waves at him as she disappears, fights not to scream or grimace or do anything to frighten him.</p><p>He doesn’t react, simply watches as she vanishes.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>She arrives screaming, stays curled on the floor. The longer jumps taking more and more of a toll on her body, she thinks, wondering how much further she can go. </p><p>Trying to just breathe, in and out, in and out, but she’s seeing baby Tom rolling his ball back and forth, back and forth, and her breaths align to the movements of his ball in her mind eye. She would scream again but she’s hyperventilating too much, and all she gets out are choked whimpers.</p><p>She can feel strong arms picking her up, carrying her, depositing her on a bed. She can feel the mattress sink down as he joins her, sits on the edge.</p><p>She rolls onto her back, tries to focus her eyes. It’s harder than it ought to be because the room is dark, she gets a sense of night around her, shadows and a flickering candle somewhere near. Eventually though she can see his face somewhat clearly. Hair longer than ever before, fine threads of silver by his temples, and she relaxes just a little. It’s the version of him she’s the most comfortable with, maybe even...</p><p>No. Not that.</p><p>“How long?” she asks hoarsely. </p><p>“How long since Peru? A little over two years,” he answers. “You haven’t been back since,” he preempts her next question.</p><p>She sits up, feeling a little stronger.</p><p>“Where are you? We. Where are we?”</p><p>“Romania,” he says, scanning her intently. Looking for weapons, she assumes, with quite some pleasure. Of course, she’s wearing nothing but her dress.</p><p>“Let me guess: Transylvania? Are you here to dig up Vlad the Impaler’s corpse and use his fangs for a necklace?”</p><p>“Well, <em> you </em> recovered quickly,” he says coldly and scoots back a little so that she can throw her legs over the edge, touch her feet to the cold floor.</p><p>“I’ve had far too much practice,” she sighs, suddenly weary again, the weight of timelines as heavy as chains and boulders strapped to her body. She needs to do something to fight the melancholy, the desperation. How fortunate that she had ended up here.</p><p>He hums a little, leans back on his hands.</p><p>“Had a rough time of it since I saw you last, dear?” His voice sings clear with mockery, </p><p>“Yes,” she says and stands, turns to face him. Pulls the dress over her head and drops it by his feet, “and I want you to make me forget for a while.”</p><p>His smile is sanguinary, his eyes like flares as he too stands from the bed. No hesitation, just greed.</p><p>“I can do that, my wraith.” He puts a hand on her naked hip, where the marks he left her with last time are still visible, and nods towards the other end of the room. “Go lean over the table.”</p><p>She does, breaths quickening, her skin already warming, her body growing heavy and languid. She grabs the edge of the table, and he kicks her legs further apart, pulls hard at her hair until her head tips back and her back sinks into an arch.</p><p>“You’ll stay like this,” her murmurs into her ear, “you’ll stay like this for me.”</p><p>She nods, toes curling, chewing on her lip as he moves behind her, strokes his free hand over her buttocks. Kneads them, feels the softness of her skin. Tickles, and she shifts on her feet. Then, unexpectedly, a smack so hard that she yelps and tries to jerk forward, into the table. But his grip on her hair remains, and she gets nowhere.</p><p>“That’s for letting it go two years until you came back.”</p><p>“What? But I have no control over…”</p><p>Another smack, harder than the first, her behind burns and she feels sweat beading like pearls on her forehead.</p><p>“That’s for not telling me your name.”</p><p>“But I <em> have </em> told you my…”</p><p>He pulls viciously at her hair, wrenches her head further back, and then another blow with all his strength behind it, and she cries out now, unable to hold it back.</p><p>“That’s for talking back.”</p><p>She groans, trying to find some sense in the sensations she’s feeling. Can’t. Adrenaline and pain and anticipation and desire, fight or flight, instincts warring and firing every which way.</p><p>Yet another smack, as hard as he can, forcing a whimper out of her.</p><p>“That’s for attempting to kill me with my own dagger.”</p><p>“Tom. <em> Tom! </em>I...I don’t know…how...”</p><p>Two spanks in fast succession, one after the other.</p><p>“That’s for not remaining silent.”</p><p>And so he continues, blow after blow, and she doesn’t know what to do with herself, standing lost at the confused crossroad between pleasure and pain, the warring sensations turning into something surreal, colours and whirling reflections splashed onto the inside of her skull. Then there’s an emerging clarity ahead of her, a pinprick of light, a promise of silence. She begins using the pain as a stepping stone to chase that light, that quiet and peace and oblivion that she so craves, reaching reaching <em> reaching.</em></p><p>But when she’s almost there he suddenly stops.</p><p>She sobs with the loss, covered in sweat and flanks heaving as if she’s run for miles. She’s holding on to the table with a white-knuckled grip and her head is hanging down, forehead almost touching the tabletop.</p><p>She can hear him adjusting his clothes behind her, and his voice is a growl when he speaks, rumbling from deep in his chest, predatorial, unhinged. </p><p>“I’ve never thought of myself as a creature of urges, needs, but you bring out a beast inside of me. I want to hurt you. I want to fuck you. I want to hold your heart in my hand. I want to see it beat against my palm, glistening like a jewel.”</p><p>One of his fingers finds her apex, pushes inside with ease, ensures that she’s ready to take him. She is, she’s soaked and near madness for want of an outlet. When he removes the finger again she looks over her shoulder at him, sees him sucking it clean.</p><p>Then he pushes inside her, hard enough that he makes her feet come clean off the floor, forcing her hips up on the tabletop. She cries out, scrabbles for purchase, cants her hips and arches her back even deeper to take more of him. </p><p>The pace he sets is ruthless, and again he’s seamlessly blending submission with lust with pain, forcing her to take it all, drown in it. She knows she won’t last long, not like this, close as she is already. She doesn’t <em> want </em> to last. So when he reaches around and presses the pad of his thumb down on her she lets go immediately. Tumbles heedlessly downward, entirely out of control, chasing the silence and peace.</p><p>When she comes back into cognisance he’s still slamming in and out of her, draped over her back, one of his forearms pressed against her throat to keep her still for him. His movements are instinctive and uncoordinated now, going faster and faster until suddenly he goes still, then spills inside her, biting down on his release.</p><p>He remains on top of her for a little while after, sweaty bodies sticking to each other, heaving breaths aligning.</p><p>“Bed,” he finally whispers into her neck, and helps her stand, leading her over to the bed. She sinks down on it, then hisses when her sore backside comes into contact with the rough linen. He laughs as she rolls over on her stomach.</p><p>“One of the most pleasurable things I’ve ever done, trashing you. I should have done it a long time ago.”</p><p>She says nothing, buries her face in the pillow and glories in the silence inside her head. It’s beautiful, and she wonders that it could be bequeathed to her by such wretched creature as he.</p><p>He runs his fingers all over her back and thighs, and harder over her buttocks.</p><p>“I’m finding a way to keep you in one place. Keep you <em> still.</em> My power is great, and it’s ever growing. You gave me your virgin blood, in a place of ancient magic. That means you are mine, irrevocably, forever, through all of time.”</p><p>Then he writes on her skin with his wand. It burns, but she keeps herself in check for him, floating on the pain. He uses intricate spells to etch runes on her back and arms and legs, intended to keep her grounded in time and chained to him. He whispers and hisses at her as he goes, and she mostly lets his words float in the air above her head.</p><p>“Every inch of you belongs to me. I want to be able read you like Braille.”</p><p>She wonders at his ease with using Muggle terminology, but writes it off as one of the many paradoxal hypocrisies that seems such intrinsic part of him. She says nothing, just moves closer into him, seeks warmth and comfort from the very being that will break her entire world.</p><p>As if he travels alongside her thoughts he speaks again.</p><p>“When I rule the world I’ll pluck dying stars from the heavens for you to wear in your hair. You’ll be beautiful like that.”</p><p>“I came to kill you,” she reminds him in a whisper, and he chuckles.</p><p>“Nothing can kill me, my wraith. I’ve seen to it.”</p><p>She tries to brush off his words, not wanting to let any truth in them touch her skin, cling to her. This is the longest she’s ever been allowed to stay still, and it’s blissful. She doesn’t want anything to push her away from the feeling.</p><p>Eventually she stands, puts on her dress, stretches her aching, bruised body by walking around the room. Finds some wine and bread and cheese, eats and drinks standing up. He stays in bed, languid, ruffled, following her every move,</p><p>“I don’t understand why I keep coming back to this time. To <em> now</em>.”</p><p>He stretches, and she can’t help admiring him, in his prime and heady with power. </p><p>“Could it perhaps be because you <em> want </em> to. Have you considered that? That you might somehow, however little, control your jumps?”</p><p>She looks at him, wide eyed. The suggestion is terrifying to her, incomprehensible, perhaps because there’s something like truth around the edges of his words. But before she can consider it, study the idea, she feels the pull again, the pain, and the last thing she sees is the searing, violent rage on his face.</p><p>His runes on her skin working just as little as his <em> Imperturbable </em> did back in sixth year. </p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>She knows immediately that he’s Voldemort here. </p><p>She recognises the chandeliers, the art, the impossible ceiling height.</p><p>Bleakly she wonders where he’s taken up residence. She is far enough into the future that he could be living in the Versailles for all she knows, he could have conquered the entire world.</p><p>She scrapes herself from the floor, looks around and finds some small relief in the fact that none of his acolytes are around. Just…</p><p>“Ah. I’ve been waiting for you.”</p><p>Just him.</p><p>That sibilant hiss, high pitched and nuanced. Or perhaps she believes it nuanced because she <em> knows </em> him now.</p><p>She turns around. Can’t help a step back as he stands from what she can only describe as a throne. Begins approaching her, and she’s trying to find signs or hints of Tom Riddle in his face. Whispers of the dark, intelligent, brutal man bent on world domination and the mastering of all forbidden knowledge. But still just a man.</p><p>Voldemort is not. He’s something else, monstrous and pale, that serpentine face, those red eyes burning with madness and glee. Reeking of the dark arts, death clinging to him like a second skin.</p><p>She already knew all of this, of course. But it’s still unnerving, no, terrifying, up close. And he’s <em> more </em> now, here, than when she drank her potion and everything went wrong.</p><p>More wrong.</p><p>He stops just before her, deep into her space, and runs those red eyes along her.</p><p>“You look the same. You always look the same, Hermione. My constant.”</p><p>A terrifying hand reaches for her face, tucks a curl behind her ear, strokes her cheek with one bony finger. He’s strangely warm, and for a second, just a second, she closes her eyes and dips her face towards his hand, hunts after the feeling.</p><p>When she opens her eyes again he smiles, and for a moment there she sees him. <em> Tom</em>. Flickering like static behind the demonic mask of Voldemort, like a spectre, the arrogance in the smile, the surety, the power.</p><p>“You’re wondering when you are,” he states, and she nods, because she really doesn’t know.</p><p>He steps closer, which should be impossible really, but somehow he manages. She can feel the power of him vibrate along her contours, enveloping her and hugging her, or perhaps sapping her, she can’t tell.</p><p>“You are ten years hence from when you first drank your potion. In the future. And it’s a struggle for you to stay very long here, I suspect because the potion was designed only for travelling back. You really, really ought to have been more careful and diligent with that one, you know,” he drawls as an aside, “it really was a terribly impulsive thing to do.”</p><p>“I think I did rather well considering I was hunted and terrified and desperate,” she snaps, and he smiles coldly, strokes a finger along the contours of her lips.</p><p>“Ah, yes, there’s the hellcat. My wraith. But be that as it may, you won’t stay stable for long here, you’ll be gone soon. But…” he reaches out, grabs a hold of her wrist, lifts her arm up to the light, “your contours are fairly solid. You have a little while yet. That’s good. I want to show you something.”</p><p>An unthinking dread grips her then, instinctive and primal, no rhyme or reason to it, but cold and heavy about her bones, a scratching at the base of her neck. Nothing that he could want to show her is good, not here, not <em> now.</em></p><p>“What is it?” she asks through cold lips struggling to form the words properly, they come out of her mouth shapeless and without any sharp edges, a damnably weak murmur.</p><p>“A surprise for you, my dear. I meant to tell you sooner, but, well...I don’t see you all that often, do I? That mad way you have of just going poof!” </p><p>A sarcastic quirk to his brow, before grabbing her arm in an undeniable grip and tugging her along. This is not an option. She goes with him, or she suspects he would drag her behind him. Or carry her.</p><p>He leads her out of the throne room, and across a giant hall, arched ceiling high above them, a flagstone floor that makes their steps echo all around. Vaulted windows above her head, and wall paintings of deep and vivid colours, heavily stylised, the lines verdant and stark. It takes her a second to realise that they are depicting wizards and witches. Then another to see that Voldemort himself is heavily featured in many of the scenes. </p><p>They’re depicting his ascent to power. Battles and triumphs and the death of her friends, spattered all over the stone walls in beautiful, considered brush strokes. She wonders if the blood of the fallen was mixed with the paint. It seems like something that would tickle the former man by her side. </p><p>She tries to choke back sobs, refuses to cry in front of him, and turns her head away before she happens on the scene that will inevitably depict the deaths of Harry and Ron, how they were torn apart right in front of her.</p><p>Her eyes fall upon something else instead, and despite his hard grip on her she stops in her tracks. Can feel breaths struggling to break free, can feel sick vertigo like noxious shadows across her vision.</p><p>It’s her. Idealised, but unmistakably her. Her wild hair, her large eyes. Sitting by the foot of Voldemort’s throne, her head in his lap, his hand playing with one of the stars liberally scattered in her hair. Wild, bloated stars shining too bright, she sees, stars about to die a violent death. Implode, then explode.</p><p>No. <em> No</em>.</p><p>He follows her eyes, sees what she’s looking at. Smiles a little, that serpent face of his managing for a second to look...<em> fond</em>.</p><p>“That hasn’t happened yet, but it will soon. I’ll make sure of it. I’ll finally find a way to keep you put.”</p><p>He looks at the markings and runes he drew on her skin some forty odd years ago; some of them are peeking out underneath her dress sleeves, and he doesn’t appear surprised that they are still fresh. Those first, primitive attempts of his to keep her in one place. Then he tugs on her arm, dismissive of the pain she’s feeling, the turmoil.</p><p>“But this isn’t what I wanted to show you. Come this way.”</p><p>Numbly she obeys, and begs for the first stirrings of time, the searing pain and with it the knowledge that she’ll soon be gone from here. But nothing. Not yet.</p><p>He opens a large wooden door at the far end of the hall. Beyond it rough stairs descend down into darkness. </p><p>Dungeons.</p><p>“No,” she says, irrational fear suddenly making her go near mindless, premonition snapping at her heels “<em>no </em>! I don’t want to, please, don’t make me.”</p><p>“Hush,” he says, “there is no danger for you down there. I’m with you. I’m here. Come.”</p><p>And that, she thinks, is the problem.</p><p>“No, she says again, backing up, trying to break herself loose from his hold. “Please. <em> Tom.</em>” </p><p>All in vain, of course, he’s infinitely stronger than her, and eventually he simply picks her up in a bridal carry, holds her close to him, and aided by a wandless Lumos they start descending the stairs. </p><p>She presses her face into his neck, tries to hide from him by hiding <em> in </em> him, breathing deeply to calm herself but only succeeding in getting gulping lungfuls of <em> him</em>. There’s still hints of Tom Riddle underneath Voldemort, still that smell of cold nights and obsidian power, but almost overwhelmed by the creature that he chose to become. His neck is wet and salty. She realises it’s from her tears.</p><p>Eventually he stops, and she takes a deep breath and looks up from the safety and the danger of him.</p><p>They’re in front of a row of cells, with Voldemort nodding towards the one in the middle. Rough rusting bars and dirty straw on the floor. Walls dripping with damp, the rustlings of rodents all around.</p><p>“There,” he whispers into her ear, then gently sets her down on the ground, giving her a little push. “Go look.”</p><p>She doesn’t want to, but now when she’s close enough she can’t look away.</p><p>Two creatures huddled against the far wall, and it takes her a while to realise they’re human. They look...wrong. Missing limbs, broken and twisted. She sees an arm sitting too far back, a leg turned the wrong way. A missing eye here, missing fingers there. A nose upside down.</p><p>It takes a long time before her eyes, her brain, can accept what her subconscious is screaming at her.</p><p>It’s Harry, and it’s Ron. </p><p>“I kept them for you,” he says from behind her. “You are fond of them, no? Well, they are quite alive, as you can see.”</p><p>Her voice is leaden, flat. </p><p>“But, I saw them die. I...was covered in their blood.”</p><p>So much blood.</p><p>He scoffs.</p><p>“Merely grievously wounded. I fear my Death Eaters got a bit...carried away at the capture despite orders to the contrary. Overzealous. I healed them both. For you. A few limbs missing here and there, but you can’t have everything, can you? And you, you I let run, of course, so that things would still align. So that nothing would change.”</p><p>She’s cold, so cold, nausea rippling through her. In his mind he is probably giving her a great gift: the life of her friends, friends she had long since thought dead.</p><p>She steps closer, all the way up to the bars, clutches them so she can steady her shaking hands.</p><p>She can see straight away that Ron is empty, catatonic, <em> wiped</em>. But Harry, brave, strong Harry, he’s still somewhat here. Has managed to cling to pieces of himself throughout all this, stubborn to the last. She can see awareness in his eyes, something like life.</p><p>“Harry,” she whispers. “Harry.”</p><p>He looks up then, eyes blank as he sees her face, no recognition. </p><p>“Harry!” she tries again, ‘it’s me. Hermione.”</p><p>Voldemort stays blessedly quiet as Harry’s head begins shaking back and forth, rejecting the notion that she could be standing right in front of him. She wonders what has happened inside his mind, all those years he’s been a captive here with a broken body and Voldemort thinking himself a benevolent victor. </p><p>“Harry, please,” she begs, crying now, hulking sobs, she doesn’t think she can ever stop.</p><p>Harry slowly stands, supporting himself against the wall. Starts shuffling slowly towards her, one foot twisted and dragging behind him. Halfway across the cell floor he stops again, looks at her once more. </p><p>“‘Mione?”</p><p>His voice is guttural, hoarse, cracked, but it’s him, and he knows her, recognises her. She cries harder, presses her entire face and body against the bars so that she can reach as far into the cell as possible. Holds her hand out to him. He’s coming closer again, is almost within reach when she feels the telltale riptide approaching, the hurt and the inevitability.</p><p>“No,” she screams. “No!”</p><p>She’s straining to reach Harry's hand but she disappears all the same. </p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>She lands on grass, and she doesn’t bother figuring out where, that’s not important. Not anymore. He will be somewhere near and that’s all that matters.</p><p>Indeed she soon hears footsteps, then them stopping next to her prone form.</p><p>“You’re here.”</p><p>She looks up at him just long enough to ascertain that he’s of the right time, then she pulls herself upright using his body for support. Claws at his clothes, gasping for breath, wheezing with sobs. Barely just managing to get her words out.</p><p>“I want you to take me to whatever hovel you’re staying in right now. I want you to fuck me. I want you to fuck me as hard as you can.”</p><p>He looks at her, at her red eyes that she’s stubbornly averting from him, her white face, her tears. The way her entire body shakes, how her teeth shatters. Without a word he takes her arm and starts walking, and she half-runs next to him, is almost pulling him along even though she’s got no idea where they are or where they are going. She doesn’t look at their surroundings as they go, gets a sense only of bright colours, heat, throngs of people and narrow alleyways.</p><p>Then he pulls her up some stairs, throws a door open and leads her into a room suffused with light and air. She doesn’t notice any of it though, just locates the bed and hurries over to it, shedding her dress as she goes. Crawls onto the bed on all fours. She hears him cursing behind her, struggling with his clothes before simply vanishing them with an impatient wave of his hand, then he joins her.</p><p>She pushes him back, down, straddles him. Takes him in hand and guides him inside her, sinks down on him as hard as she can. No preambles, no quarter.</p><p>“Gods!” he rasps as she starts moving, and he surges upwards to meet her, grabs her hips for leverage so he can take over control, ruts up into her over and over again. She braces herself on his chest, both her hands on his heart, and he can’t take his eyes off the lewd way her breasts bounce with his thrusts. </p><p>Then she leans backwards again, takes one of his hands from her hip and places it over her throat. Uses her own hand to push it hard against her jugular, and he understands immediately, starts squeezing. </p><p>When her breathing turns rasping and laboured he groans, and she hides herself behind the dark spots appearing in front of her eyes.</p><p>“More,” she wheezes, and he obliges, and she can’t believe the beauty, the thrill, the intensity of having no air as he’s as deep inside her as he’ll go. The unbelievable freedom in the thought that he could finish her right now, crush her windpipe, <em> erase </em> her. </p><p>Like she wants to erase all her thoughts and all her memories. </p><p>“Tom,” she manages to get out, “Tom!”</p><p>Then there comes the silence, rushing towards her like the ground rushing towards someone falling from up high, and as her vision goes entirely black she wonders if he’ll let her go in time.</p><p>She gets her answer when she comes to again and can feel him tracing the raised runes on her back. She doesn’t know how much time has passed. She opens her eyes and stares out into the room and thinks that it didn’t work, she still remembers, she can still <em>feel.</em></p><p>The light has changed, become warmer, dimmer, heading towards evening. She holds onto his breaths, her cheek against his heartbeats, and she wonders how he could have become both her only firm point and her hated tormentor; helping her forget, then forcing her to remember again.</p><p>“Are you thinking about killing me?” he asks, voice as soft as it can ever get. He drags his fingers down her sides, then up on her back, follows the bumps of her spine as if traversing a landscape. Rolling hills and the skies of her conviction. </p><p>“Yes,” she admits, voice small. And she arches her spine, encouraging him to keep stroking her, soothing her, riling her, like only his touch can do.</p><p>“And? Even if you were able, do you think you could do it? Do you think you could bring yourself to take my life?” His voice is amused, as if this is purely an academic quandary. “Me, the only one you’ve got. Remember? When you’re not with me you’re nowhere.”</p><p>Of course she remembers. It might have been a few years since she first told him, down in the Chambers of Secrets, hugged by his basilisk, but for her it was yesterday. Maybe a week ago. A month? More? She doesn’t know anymore. It feels like an eternity, it feels like nothing. She doesn’t know how time has shaped itself around her during all of this, she doesn’t know much she’s broken. If she were to make it back, would an hour have gone by? A day? A hundred years? Would she be like one of the lost women of yore, disappeared into a fairy ring, returned two hundred years later with the entire world moved on?</p><p>That’s academic too, she decides. She won’t make it back.</p><p>She rolls onto her back then, so he looks down on her. She reaches up, strokes his temples, writ in silver like they are. Presses her fingertips hard against them, like she’s trying to reach his mind and put the swirls and grooves of her fingerprints on it. That brilliant, corrupted mind of his, capable of genius, capable of mass murder. Genocide, if allowed to continue. Capable of tearing her friends limb from limb then putting them back together wrong.</p><p>But all she’s got. He’s everything in her world.</p><p>“No,” she says finally, as she can feel the beginnings of that familiar, awful force of time. “No, I don’t think I could bear killing you anymore. I couldn’t.” </p><p>He enters her again then, deep and languid, fills her up, splits her in two. </p><p>“As I thought,” he whispers, even as she wraps her legs and her arms about him, bringing him closer to her, too close, awfully close. Buries her face into his neck and inhales all that he is, all the blackness nuanced in purples and blues and reds. His soul shimmering like an oil spill. This is the closest they’ve ever been in this act, chest against chest, and it’s unbearable.</p><p>“I can’t harm you,” she pants as he ruts into her harder, “but I can make sure you can’t harm anyone anymore either. That’s my only other option. <em> Choice</em>.”</p><p>He pants out a raspy laugh, increases the strength of his thrusts so much that it hurts, taking her back to that blissful precipice between pleasure and pain where her mind goes quiet and blank and white.</p><p>“And how would you propose to do that?”</p><p>She tips her head back then, makes sure they’ve got eye contact. She’s about to implode, and she can tell that he is too, grown impossibly wide inside her, eyes wild and hungry. </p><p>“You said it yourself,” she grinds out, made near speechless by the twin sensations of sensual release and the ruthless pull of time, “that I’ve only got you. You are the only thing I find when I’m thrown about by time, the only constant. My terrible lodestar. If time takes us <em> both</em>, then where would we go?”</p><p>His eyes widen as he finally understands, but it’s too late, because with him deep inside her time carries them away as one.</p><p>To nowhere.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>Well, that’s it for this story. Such many heartfelt thanks for all your encouragement, kudos and bookmarks and comments. You lot are such a fantastic bunch and I can’t thank you enough.</p><p>I feel I have more Tom and Hermione exploits in me, so will be back one of these days ❤️</p>
        </blockquote><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is the first part of my entry for the Tomoine Trope Bingo. Now I’ve just got to deliver the rest by July 31st hahahaha. Fine. It’ll be FINE.</p><p>Not a native English speaker, shout if you see anything dodgy.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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